


Code, Photographs, and Spilled Drinks

by ShinjiShazaki



Series: "Request" Fics [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, I got asked to write my oldest and most favorite OCs and I could've cried, request fic, still kinda fandom-y because of their origins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:55:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27347746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinjiShazaki/pseuds/ShinjiShazaki
Summary: A view on the life of Kailas Arav before she met one Hova Sirvat at college.(Modern AU of original characters from an old fandom)
Relationships: Kailas Arav/Hova Sirvat
Series: "Request" Fics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2170344
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Code, Photographs, and Spilled Drinks

**Author's Note:**

> A "request" fic from a user on twitter!

Kailas Arav had never been particularly good at starting conversations. People tended to talk _about_ her instead, given how she was always taller than every other child no matter what grade she was in. It didn’t help that she wore glasses for remarkably bad eyesight, and it certainly didn’t help that her parents were an odd couple among the other parents at her school. She wasn’t clear on the details when she was young, but by fifth grade she knew how odd it was for a successful businesswoman like Jaya to be so happily married to an animator like Bao. Despite it all, she was happy and able to ignore most things said behind her back.

During the summer, she spent most of her free time climbing the trees in their backyard with notebooks in her backpack. Though she tried her best to draw as beautifully as her father, her hands kept wandering back to math problems and theories she’d written all over the pages. It made Bao and Jaya both laugh when she came inside at dusk, leaves stuck on her and fingers covered in smudge pencil marks, and they reminded her she could do whatever she wanted when she grew up. It made her happy, and she kept climbing whenever she wasn’t out running.

It all happened just after her tenth birthday. Bao had gone out to pick up something for dinner, and Kailas was up in her favorite tree with a book on coding she’d received as a present from her grandmother Neha a few days prior. The topic was new, utterly engrossing and so full of options she could barely wait for Bao to come home to ask him if coding was part of what he did. Because she was so focused, the sound of Jaya shouting her name from the back deck was startling. She jumped, looking to the deck, and was just able to see the distress on Jaya’s face at a distance. Kailas went to climb down, and a branch she had always relied on to bear her weight snapped in her hand.

She woke in the hospital, blind in her left eye from falling badly. Jaya was there, as was Neha. Bao, they told Kailas, had died in a car accident several hours before. As Kailas and Jaya began to cry, Neha moved to pull them to her, giving them each a shoulder to hide their sobbing in.

As time passed, Kailas grew grateful that the last memory she had of Bao was of him smiling and ruffling her hair. It made it easier to go by his office, to look at the hundreds of drawings he had left behind. When Neha moved back in with them, she never pushed to have his office changed or any of his things moved. She helped Jaya tidy the office without a single one of her usual snide comments about his job. When she went as far as to compliment his work, a wistful look on her face, Kailas could not help but stare and smile.

They sorted things out as the summer faded, Neha taking charge when the grief threatened to leave Jaya and Kailas bed bound. She made sure Kailas had new glasses and learned how to manage her blindness, and she sat with Jaya to let her cry until she could breathe again. There was one lasting change that Jaya and Neha agreed upon following Bao’s passing. Every last trace of alcohol was purged from the house, and though they both had enjoyed bits of wine over dinner in the past, they never bought another bottle. Kailas was more than glad for it; she would’ve lost her appetite seeing wine knowing Bao had died because of a drunk driver.

The night before school started, Jaya and Neha sat Kailas down in the living room. They all had tea, chamomile for the late hour, with a plate of Bao’s favorite cookies between them. Kailas held her cup and stared at the cookies, hating that her left eye still burned with tears despite seeing nothing.

“Kailas,” Jaya said, “do you think you can go to school tomorrow?”

“I want to,” Kailas mumbled. “I miss doing math.”

“Bao would be happy to hear you say that,” Neha said. “He was always proud of your grades, you know. He would send me photos of your report card.”

“Can I go?” Kailas asked.

“Yes, but I want you to know it may be difficult,” Jaya said. “Other children may get the facts wrong. Bao was—it was someone else’s fault. He wasn’t drinking and he was driving safely. The other person was completely at fault. But some children may say the wrong thing because they don’t know any better.”

“So people might say Papa was drinking?” Kailas asked.

“Because they don’t know any better,” Jaya repeated. “I don’t want you to get upset with them, Kailas. We know better. Bao was not at fault, no matter what anyone says. So do you think you can go and not get upset? For me and for Grandma?”

Kailas nodded, and she thought she knew what to expect the next day. What she couldn’t have expected was the degree to which her blind eye became a problem. It quickly became a target of the bullies of the grade above her, who attempted to startle her at random by approaching on her blind side and shouting. Her hearing grew attuned on her left so quickly she was able to turn to face them on approach within a few days. Much like their teasing over her height and glasses, it faded away before long.

Middle school was a blur Kailas did not bother remembering. High school was better, giving her access to the advanced math courses she wanted. She kept to herself, staying on the left sides of classrooms so she could focus better with her right eye. Despite it, math teachers continued to pick her as the in-class tutor for those who struggled, and it often found her paired with girls who she had watched be dismissed and ignored by those same teachers.

At first, she was mildly annoyed at being forced to do her teachers’ work when she was just fifteen. She was far more annoyed that the girls had been ignored in the first place, and she put her high levels of patience to work to help them study a subject they’d come to hate by proxy. The improvement was always so drastic and quick that it left the girls and teachers flabbergasted, and more than one girl had wrapped Kailas in a massive hug to thank her for saving their grades after tests were returned.

The first time this had happened, Kailas patted the girl’s back, said she was glad to help, and went on with her day. The second time it happened, Kailas patted the girl’s back, said she was glad to help, and went home in an absolute panic because she wished she’d gotten a kiss as thanks instead. She sat at the base of her favorite tree and did math until Jaya called her in for dinner, and she stared at her plate because the only things in her head were numbers.

“What’s got you in a twist, dear?” Neha asked. “You only stare like that when you’ve got an equation you somehow can’t solve.”

“I think I’m gay,” Kailas said before she knew what she was doing. She froze when Jaya and Neha simply looked at her. When Jaya started to laugh, a light and cheerful sound, she relaxed slightly.

“I’ve been waiting for you to come out to me the moment you looked at boys and looked _horribly_ bored, my girl,” Jaya said. “Don’t worry.”

“Is there some girl you were looking to bring home and introduce?” Neha asked. “I’ll have you know I still have high standards when it comes to partners for my daughter and granddaughter.”

Kailas relaxed completely. It made attraction easier, looking at women with more and more admiration. Though she never found someone to be in a relationship with by the time high school came to an end, she knew her way around casual flirting with the other girls who were out in the senior year. Like most of those other girls, she had several questioning freshmen and sophomores looking at her with intense blushes on their faces. She was always aware of the shift from middle school to then: her height, glasses, and blind eye now unique and desirable when she’d gotten teased for them. It made the notion of college all the more appealing and nerve wracking.

By the time she was carrying boxes up to the second floor of her dormitory building, Kailas had a solid plan of what her studies would be. She had almost no plan when it came to how to introduce herself to a roommate, still wishing she’d managed to win one of the solitary rooms in the dorm. Still, as the day wore on and she began to arrange her things on the left side of the room without a sign of her roommate, she grew uncertain.

“She’ll be a day late,” the resident advisor eventually came by to tell her. “I sent her an email saying that you’re her roommate, so you might get someone coming up to you all of a sudden tomorrow.”

“Isn’t tomorrow the orientation?” Kailas asked.

“It is. Our group starts campus tours at eight, so make sure to set an alarm.” He offered her a hand, saying, “Good to meet you. Just let me know if you have any issues—I’m at the end of the hall.”

She shook his hand, nodded, and got back to work arranging her things. She slept reasonably well, though found herself with a terrible case of nerves upon waking. There were text messages on her phone from Jaya and Neha, sent just a few minutes before she woke and both containing well wishes and courage for the day. They helped, but only slightly. She cleaned up for the day, went to the cafeteria for breakfast, and returned to the dormitory to wait for the tours to start.

All things considered, the tours weren’t as informative as Kailas had expected. She still remembered the university’s layout from when she’d toured with Neha the previous winter, knowing which buildings would house her classes for 3D animation and which would deal with her ongoing math courses. Still, it was a pleasant enough day to be out on a longer walk, and she didn’t mind the other women from her dorm staying close when the men from the dorm started to grow rowdy with restless energy, running off the paths and shoving each other.

“I see we’ve still got some _high school_ freshman around,” the RA said loudly at one point, bringing it all to a stop. The men had the decency to look ashamed, and the women near Kailas giggled quietly while hiding behind her. She chuckled, shaking her head, and they all continued on. When they were released for lunch, Kailas made a quick trip back to the dormitory to check the room. She stared, seeing boxes stacked haphazardly on the right side of the room but with no other person in sight. No note had been left for her, and she sighed as she went back out.

The day progressed slowly, the students keeping to themselves as they explored the campus. Kailas found a tree to sit under, taking her laptop to work on a piece of animation until the campus-wide barbecue started late in the afternoon. As she so often did, she wondered if Bao would like what she had managed to make: a custom fire effect. She had watched loops of his effects animation for hours at a time, fascinated by what he had managed to achieve with ink and paper and several well-worn tablets. When she had watched her rig play out for several minutes, she compiled it and transferred it to her phone to watch for the rest of the day.

The sound of music playing in the distance was a cue to gather on the largest open field between the dormitories, and Kailas went to her room to drop off her laptop before setting out. The fact that she still hadn’t run into her roommate was remarkable, and she did what she could to survey the crowd with one eye and both ears. Her height was of some help in looking about, but the fact that no one seemed to be on the lookout for her prevented anything from happening.

As the sun set and lights, standing and strung up, were turned on, Kailas moved away from the busiest areas on the field. She headed toward the tall trees around the field for a place of comfort, intent on cleaning her glasses as she took a break from other people. The sound of a camera shutter on her left made her turn her head, and she stepped back and to one side before she could walk in front of a young woman with a camera.

“Oh, you were all right!” the woman said. “But thank you for being conscientious!” She lifted the camera to look through the viewfinder, waiting a few moments before taking another picture. “I just have a couple more shots from this spot before I can finally stop shooting for the day.”

Kailas nodded and moved so the woman was on her right side. She took off her glasses, planning on cleaning both lenses thoroughly, but paused halfway through when she heard someone approaching. A young man carrying a pair of plastic cups was walking toward them directly in the line of the woman’s shot. Kailas heard the woman sigh quietly as she lowered her camera, and she raised a brow when she saw how she frowned.

“Can I interest you in a drink?” the man asked, offering the woman the cup.

“Not unless it’s water,” the woman said. She looked inside the cup. “And that looks and smells like beer.” She looked at the man, frown deepening. “This is a freshman event, you know.”

“Yeah, that’s why we gotta get the party going right!” the man laughed.

Kailas sighed. She considered her glasses, put them on top of her head, and walked toward the man with everything a terrible blur of black and color. Exactly as she’d wanted, she blundered into him and made him spill both drinks on himself. He jumped and swore aloud, and Kailas had to assume he was glaring at her.

“Sorry,” she said. “Lost my glasses, didn’t mean to run into you. Did I make you drop something?”

“ _You_ ,” he started, but he simply snarled and stormed away, spitting “ _dumbass_ ” over his shoulder.

Kailas ignored him, put her glasses back on, and looked down at herself. There were no wet patches on her clothes, and so she smiled slightly as she looked at the woman.

“Hopefully he doesn’t throw something at me on my left,” she said.

“Why on your left?” the woman asked.

“Blind on that side.”

“Oh!” the woman said. “You’re my roommate, then!”

Kailas looked at her blankly. She said, “I am?”

“Yeah! The RA sent me an email that my roommate was really tall and blind in one eye!” She put the lens cap on the camera before holding out one hand. “I’m really sorry I never got to meet you before now. My name’s Hova Sirvat.”

Kailas smiled and took her hand to shake. “Kailas Arav. I’m glad to meet you now. I wasn’t expecting you to be taking photos of the barbecue, though.”

“It was a good way to make some spending money,” Hova said. “But it’s what I want to do for a living, so any practice I can get helps.”

“I’m tempted to ask to look at other photos you’ve taken now.”

“As long as you tell me what _you’re_ looking to do for a living,” Hova said, winking as she smiled.

A flutter went through Kailas’s stomach, making her feel even taller than she was. She reached into her pocket to retrieve her phone, and she smiled as she opened the animation loop. When she saw Hova’s smile fill with delight, another flutter went through her stomach and made her face flush.

“Computer animation and 3D rigging,” said Kailas. “I finished that today.”

“Do you have other things like this?” Hova asked.

“I do. Why don’t we get some food and something to drink that’s _not_ beer and go back to the room? We can show off to each other.”

Hova laughed, and Kailas wanted nothing more than to hear that sound again and again for the rest of the night. She took Kailas’s arm in hers and began to lead the way back toward the grills that had been set up.

“I’d like that,” Hova said, “especially if you’re going to flirt.”

Kailas laughed, and she was remarkably glad to be where she was.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're interested in getting in on "request" fics, take a gander at my pinned tweet on [my twitter](https://twitter.com/shinjishazaki) for more info!


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